Tag Archives: humor

The contemporary comedic take on April Fool’s Day is that it is the one day of the year that we direct some skepticism at what we encounter on the Internet; it is the one day of the year that we exercise discretion and judgment over the content of the material we read and deign toContinue reading “April Fool’s Day And The Cruelest Month”

I wasn’t alone in wishing I was Hermie. Many teenage boys–American or otherwise-had the same thoughts on seeing Summer of 42, the cinematic adaptation of Herman Raucher‘s memoirish coming-of-age novel, a movie that made me laugh very, very hard during its screening and then left me silent and devastated as I walked back to my boardingContinue reading “Childhood Crushes – II: Jennifer O’Neill In ‘Summer Of 42’”

The New York Times’ Resident Sophist Laureate, Ross Douthat, has a long-running argumentative and rhetorical strategy of suggesting, through dark imprecations, that ‘liberalism’ and ‘godlessness’ are to blame for America’s social evils, for they they have produced them by provoking a reaction to their excesses. If only social and political movements didn’t engage in suchContinue reading “Ross Douthat Finds ‘Ascendant Social Liberalism’ Lurking Beneath His Bed”

Marco Gutierrez, founder of the group Latinos for Trump, ‘warned’ the United States about an impending disaster in an interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC on Thursday night: My culture is a very dominant culture, and it’s imposing and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucksContinue reading “Top Ten Reasons America Needs Taco Trucks On Every Corner”

In The Importance of Being Earnest Algernon reassures himself that he is “not going to be imprisoned in the suburbs for dining in the West End.” Upon hearing that “the gaol itself is fashionable and well-aired; and there are ample opportunities of taking exercise at certain stated hours of the day,” Algernon is dismayed: “Exercise! GoodContinue reading “The Undignified Business Of ‘Exercise’”

In his review of a new translation of Giovanni Boccaccio‘s The Decameron (by Wayne A. Rebhorn, Norton, 2015), Stephen Greenblatt writes: Many of these stories are scandalously obscene, but the scandal has nothing to do with filthy words….circumlocutory words, or periphrases…have nothing to do with prudery. They are part of Boccaccio’s inexhaustible bag of metaphorical tricks, andContinue reading “Boccaccio And Double Entendres In A Patriarchal Society”

In Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (W. W. Norton, New York, 2006, pp. 6-7), Amartya Sen, in the course of asserting how ‘our freedom to assert our personal identities can sometimes be extraordinarily limited in the eyes of others’, slips in the following: [S]ometimes we may not even be fully aware how othersContinue reading “Heard The One About Fascists, Socialists, And Murderers?”

WC Fields described his fellow Ziegfield Follies mate Bert Williams–‘one of the pre-eminent entertainers of the Vaudeville era and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his time…the best-selling black recording artist before 1920′–as ‘the funniest man I ever saw and the saddest man I ever knew.’ Williams certainly made no secretContinue reading “Bert Williams and the (Funny) Sadness of Clowns”

In reviewing Diego Marani‘s Las Adventures Des Inspector Cabillot, Matthew Reynolds notes his invention of Europanto, a ‘mock international auxiliary language‘: Marani’s ability to see humour in his longing for a universal language has flowered in his creation of Europanto, a jovial pan-European language which began in his office [presumably, either the the Directorate-General for Interpretation of the European Commission,Continue reading “Diego Marani, Europanto, Blinkenlights, and Hacker Neologisms”

A few weeks ago, I had made note here of a brief excerpt from Molière’s Love’s the Best Doctor, which rather pungently satirized doctors. Today, here is another master of comedy–Ben Jonson–on doctors. (A personal reminiscence follows.) As an added bonus there is some skepticism directed at the cost of medicine, the products of the pharmaceutical industry, andContinue reading “Ben Jonson on Doctors”